Invisible Scar
by BettyBackInTheDay
Summary: Immediately following the departure of Thor and Loki with the Tesseract, the healing process begins for Clint. He wonders how Natasha can ever trust him again.


This just came out of nowhere. It's pure fluff. I own nothing related to these characters. All hail Marvel...

They sat in the SHIELD vehicle until all the other Avengers were completely out of sight. As Clint Barton was about to put the car in gear, his partner turned to him and said, "Wait. I know you want to get out and check for yourself. I know you won't be comfortable until you make a final sweep."

His hand continued to hover over the gear shift. She was right, of course. He would have a nagging thought that somehow Loki would be able to remain on earth and return to torment him. But that was going to happen whether he made a physical sweep of the area or not.

"Clint, come on. Let's take a look," she said in a way that left no other option. Then she added more softly, "It'll make ME feel better."

She always pushed the right buttons. He just heaved a heavy sigh and turned the vehicle off. He pushed the door open as if weighed a ton and met her at the passenger side.

They waked in silence and perfectly in synch. Their eyes scanned the tree line, the sidewalks, the sky, and every person who passed by. No Loki, no residual effect from the Tesseract in Central could hear the hum of the equipment a few blocks away, however, continuing the mammoth task of cleaning up after the Chitauri invasion.

As they completed their sweep of the area and returned to the vehicle, Clint seemed slightly relieved, though his comment did not support his body language. "Thanks, Nat. Maybe at 3 o'clock tomorrow morning when I wake up screaming from the nightmare, this little recon will help me relax," he grumbled as he got into the driver's seat.

As she opened the passenger side door, she tried to maintain a calm composure. It lasted all of three seconds. She slammed the door, turned to face him, and grabbed the front of his jacket. "Look, I am trying to help you. I don't know how to do that. This is way out of my league. But let me tell you something, Clint Barton. I will not give up on you and I will be damned if I let you give up on yourself. Enough of the doom and gloom. We've seen too much of that already in the past few days. Now we focus on moving on."

He looked at her with clear gray eyes. He hadn't seen or heard her clearly the entire time Loki had him under his control. When he heard her voice over the Quinjet speaker in Stuttgart, it sounded foreign and muddled. When he saw her on the detention level while they fought, she looked like a ghost to him - like someone he should know, but only important in that she was his mark to take down. In front of him now, in all her radiating anger, she looked like Natasha. His partner, his savior, the most beautiful woman in the world, and the single most important thing in his life.

"I'm sorry, Tasha, but how the hell do we move on from that?" he asked quietly. "I'm looking at you in this car and I can already see two new scars on you. Here," he whispered as he skimmed his right thumb over her left eyebrow, "and here," he whispered as he lightly touched his right forefinger over the split in her lip. "Those are from me, from my hands. How do we move on from that?"

She continued to stare at him as she felt the heat from his touch linger on her face. She tried to hold on to the anger. That was the one emotion she could wield at will. She could use it to strike and to defend. But, as she looked into his eyes, she couldn't be angry with him. The situation, yes, but not with him here in a confined space where he could see right through her. "Don't think like that. Please," she pleaded with her voice and her eyes. "Just like all the other scars, these will fade. They will become part of me, part of my story, part of our story. I trust you. As long as you trust me, that's where we start."

He did not expect such an emotional response. How could he possibly have earned back her trust, though? "Natasha, even worse than those physical scars are the emotional scars. The invisible scars that nobody else can see, but I know are there. I don't know how to deal with that. When I look at you, they're not invisible to me. I don't trust me so how can you trust me?" He continued to stare into her green eyes as if willing the answer to appear there.

She pulled him over the center console of the vehicle and held him steady with her gaze. This was no longer Natasha. He was face-to-face with the Black Widow and was reminded why she was feared on every continent on the planet. In the back of his mind, he thought it was appropriate that her reputation would be known throughout the universe now, thanks to Loki and Thor. He would save that for a later conversation. If he lived through this one.

"You didn't hurt me all those years ago when I was your mark. You didn't hurt me while under the control of a sociopathic fairytale god. I trust you with my life. Yours is a debt I can never repay and I won't belittle it by being afraid of you now," she growled through gritted teeth and wide unblinking eyes.

With the raw emotion pulsing through the car and their faces mere inches from each other, it might look like it was a split second decision. In actuality this scenario played in each of their minds hundreds of thousands of times in some iteration or other. Slowly they both leaned in and engaged in a passionate kiss. Their nonverbal communication kicked in and each knew exactly what the other was thinking. And then there was no thinking at all.

After an unknown measure of time, they pulled back and looked deep into each other's eyes. The invisible scars were laid bare for them to see and deal with together. Finally, Clint said quietly, "We really are going to get through this, aren't we?"

Natasha rolled her eyes, but with a big smile replied, "Had I known all it would take was a kiss to get that through your thick skull, I would've done that a long time ago." She moved her hands to either side of his face. "Yes, we will get through this. The scars will fade. We will be back to kicking ass as SHIELD's best team. And, with any luck, there will be a lot more of this," she said as she brought his lips back to meet hers for chaste kiss.

As he pulled back from her, he couldn't wipe the grin from his face. She pulled his sunglasses down from the top of his head and positioned them in front of his eyes. Then she put her sunglasses on. "Drive, Agent Barton."

"Where am I going?" he asked.

"To the closest intact luxury hotel. We are going to live high on SHIELD's tab for a few nights. I am going to be by your side every minute to make sure you begin your recovery comfortably. Very comfortably," she purred.

Agent Barton stole a quick sideways glance at his passenger and then he floored the gas pedal.


End file.
